The bear’s movements were as cautious and deliberate as it is possible to conceive; it placed one paw on the trunk, and then, reaching out the other with its terrible array of hooked talons, made as if to claw Portway from where he sat, and to draw him to the rocks.
As the bear strained to reach him, Portway backed slowly towards the branches, shuddering as he glanced downward into the gulf, and realised that the thin elastic trunk was all that he had to depend upon to save him from the two terrible forms of death so close at hand. At any moment he felt that the weight upon the tree might act as a lever of sufficient power to tear the roots out of the crevice in which they grew, and this kept him from moving another inch, though the bear was cautiously trying the tree, and while keeping its hind-quarters well upon the substantial rocks, stretching out farther and farther with its huge length of reach, till the terrible claws came within a foot or two of his breast.
And now a curious feeling, akin to nightmare, came over the man, and he sat astride that frail trunk, gazing wildly at the red glaring eyes of the animal, but closing his own each time the huge paw swept toward him, and he saw himself, in imagination, swept from his hold.
But the bear uttered a strange gasping growl, full of disappointment, and with an action that seemed eminently human, it altered its position, creeping more over the precipice, and clasping the tree with its hind paws, so that the next time it stretched itself out, Portway saw that he would be within its reach.
Still he could not move; only sit there, watching every deliberate act of the determined creature till it had finished its preparations, and was about to make its final stroke; the paw was even in motion, when, with a yell of horror, Portway threw himself back among the boughs.
The effect was immediate. The weight placed upon the trunk was the full extent of that which it would bear; the extra leverage produced by Portway’s action did the rest. There was a sharp, snapping, cracking noise, the tree was torn out by the roots, and in company with an avalanche of stones and earth, man, tree, and bear plunged crashing down into the great chasm yawning beneath.
The effect was varied.
The bear, whose hind paws clung to the root and rock, went down head first, and its fore paws touched the bushes beneath, clung to them, and held on, while, following the tree, its hind-quarters went right over, making the animal turn an involuntary somersault. Then its fore paws were snatched from their hold by its weight, and it fell some twenty feet, from tree to tree, where they bristled from the side before it could check its downward course, after which the huge beast coolly began to climb diagonally upward, till it reached the shelf from which it had fallen, and, after shaking itself, began slowly to retrace its steps upward, when it came upon the rifle Portway had dropped, stopped to snuffle round it for a few moments, and then proceeded toward where the encounter had first taken place, and where lay ready for him a feast such as did not often come in his generally vegetarian way.
Meanwhile, with a terrible rush, the tree, with its occupant, had gone down into the gulf, plunging from rock to bush and clump of pine, Portway clinging to it desperately, till it fell athwart a couple more trunks, and there lodged, but with such a jerk that the man was thrown from where he clung, to continue his descent alone crashing through tree and bush, till he was brought up suddenly and lay stunned and insensible to what had been going on.
At the end of a few minutes Portway unclosed his eyes and lay staring up at the sky, through the thick, ragged growth which sprang everywhere from the sides of the chasm. Then by degrees he realised that he had escaped, so far, from a terrible death, but it was some time longer before he dared to move.